Replies

Instead of outcome-based educational goals, teachers should be taught how to increase critical thinking skills of their students by various means.

Totally agree. An ounce of thinking skills would do more than a pound of $100 bills.

With an ounce of thinking skills you can go get a stack of $100 bills.

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

Instead of outcome-based educational goals, teachers should be taught how to increase critical thinking skills of their students by various means. Totally agree. An ounce of thinking skills would do more than a pound of $100 bills.

Well.... I strongly suspect that what's really missing among both the kids and even their parents, is any real contact between their education and the real world.

We live in a society that has in many important respects separated us from the consequences of our actions.

The idea of "critical thinking skills" is all well and good ... until you get to the point of trying to figure out what to think about, and why critical thinking matters in the first place. Lack of consequences means that there's no incentive to learn to think critically.

I think even the term "critical thinking skills" is a serious misnomer; isn't the point really to teach the kids not just to "think," but rather how to use information to arrive at rational, reasonable conclusions -- whether it's about math, science, economics, or politics?

Ideally, "critical thinking skills" would deal in that direct connection between ideas and reality, in such a way that the kids are actually being prepared for their entry into the real world.

As it stands now, we have a culture that can be happy about electing somebody like Obama; that doesn't understand economics or foreign policy beyond the shallow expositions passed on by the MSM, and which is often insulated from the consequences of even very poor decisions. Our impending mess is a direct result of our retreat from consequences.

And in conjunction, I think it's important to teach the kids how to assemble trustworthy information in the first place, and how to spot information that is not trustworthy. "Critical thinking" about sources, if you will, and a sense of what kinds of data are needed prior to any "critical thinking" exercise.

One of my daughter's teachers drove this point home by giving them an article to "review" and comment upon. It was from The Onion and was, predictably, outrageous and she was duly outraged ... until I suggested she check out the source of the article. She learned a lot of good stuff from that teacher ... and one of the very biggest lessons was that one.